Helping the queen navigate these treacherous waters and keep her crown is her legendary spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and his ambitious assistant. Concerned about an invasion from the Catholic king of Spain, and unsettled by religious conflicts ravaging France, she must also fend off a dynastic challenge from Mary Queen of Scots. When Elizabeth becomes queen England takes a Protestant turn, but danger of a revolt is never far from her mind. He is motivated primarily by the desire to break Sir Reginald’s and Bishop Julian’s stranglehold on his town, and to end religious prosecution across the kingdom. Their targets are the small and secretive Protestant community and Kingsbridge foremost merchant family, the Willards.Īfter the leader of the Protestants is burned at the stake and Ned Willard’s mother Alice is bankrupted by Sir Reginald’s backhanded business dealings, Ned sets out to Hatfield to work towards securing Princess Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne. The town’s secular and religious government is dominated by Catholics – Sir Reginald Fitzgerald, the mayor, and Bishop Julian, both greedy and vengeful. Kingsbridge, like the rest of England, is being torn apart by religious strife. The novel opens in the final year of the reign of Queen Mary I. History fans know this period as the last few turbulent decades of the Tudor era, marked by religious and dynastic conflicts. A Column of Fire, true to form, delivers an epic tale that effortlessly weaves several storylines following the lives of the descendants of the previous novels’ protagonists. After the runaway success of Pillars of the Earth and World Without End comes the third part in the Kingsbridge series. Of course, Ken Follett needs no introduction. This is a review I have wanted to post for months, but this book is MASSIVE at over 900 pages.
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